How to Write a Book Title That’s Not Taken

Ana Gonzalez

5 years ago

Book Mockup With A Cottagecore Aesthetic

How to Write a Book Title That's Not Taken

With our new Book Title Checker (our tool based on Open Library database), you’ll be able to see if a title is already in use before spending money on a book cover, publicity, or in sending it out for publishing!

Cross Check Your Book Title Options Before Settling On One

Imagine having your book finished, and when going out to get your ISBN (eBooks, as well as physical ones, need to have an International Standard Book Number before being published), you realize that the book title you so have fallen in love with is already in use. No need to worry now! We are here to help tell you how to write a book title that is completely original!

Ready? Write your book title down below and see what comes up!

Book Title Ideas Checker

Let’s hope your book title doesn’t appear here

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Hopefully, your book title won’t appear up above, but if it does, don’t worry, most books go through several names before settling on the one that makes them a bestseller. Oh, and by the way, we’re not storing these, so feel free to come back to this tool as many times as you want and check all your ideas!

Also, we have a few more pieces of advice for all indie writers out there! Don’t miss out on our Best book publishers’ resources for indie writers or our How to Develop a Solid Writer Brand posts.

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FAQ

How do you write a title of a book?

Book titles of full works like books or newspapers should be italicized. Titles of short works like poems, articles, short stories, or chapters should be put in quotation marks. Titles of books that form a larger body of work may be put in quotation marks if the name of the book series is italicized

How do you write a book title if you can't italicize?

“Do I underline book titles or italicize them?” most style guides recommend the following guidelines:

If you have italics as an option, use it.
If not, underline.
If underlining isn’t an option, use asterisks or under-slashes to set off titles.

That last one is the way to go when you include a book title in a text message or social media post or comment, where you can’t apply any kind of text formatting.

Are you supposed to underline book titles?

We should underline a book title when writing something traditional. However, when referencing books in sentences and bibliographies, we should always write a book’s title in italics.